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Blizzard's discussing balance changes in Patch 7.2.5. Wild Call will be changed for BM Hunters. Nighthold and the tanking discussion has forced the removal of Mark of Ursolfor Guardians and there are also plans to make Soul Shard regeneration for Destruction Warlocks more granular.

Beast Mastery Hunter Changes

Wild Call will be changed in 7.2.5 to reduce cooldown instead of resetting it.

In 7.2.5, we are changing Wild Call from a cooldown reset mechanic to a cooldown reduction mechanic.

The base proc chance will be doubled and the cooldown reduction per proc will be 3.0 sec (affected by haste), roughly half the average expected value of current live Wild Call procs. Baseline, the amount of total Dire Beast casts and Dire Beast uptime should be roughly the same as on live, except the changes should result in smoother Focus regeneration from more well-paced Dire Beast casts.

Additionally, these changes have the desired side effect of bringing the power level of The Mantle of Command more in line with other legendaries.

In my earlier post on this thread, I mentioned we were already considering what the right changes to Guardian would be going into Tomb, but that it was likely going to be for 7.2.5 and not 7.2. In the first 7.2.5 PTR, you can expect to see the following changes to Guardian:

--Mark of Ursolremoved
--Maul costs 30 Rage (from 20), is now on the GCD, can now proc Gore, and damage increased by 400%.

I imagine the first change is most pertinent to those focused on the broader issue of tank balance. It may seem rather extreme, and that's part of why doing it mid-tier wasn't the plan we went with. But two factors that were important were 1) Mark of Ursol's design (trade your physical AM for a magical AM) was somewhat incompatible with any use of magic damage other than an occasional threatening spike, and 2) Druids had little in the way of identifiable weaknesses or things that potentially scare them. Even without Mark of Ursol, they have a mastery that's fully effective against magic, multiple medium to long cooldowns, Frenzied Regeneration, and some passives like Adaptive Fur. While we'll be continuing to watch this in 7.2.5 development, our expectation is that they will not struggle to complete content that involves magic damage--which the clearest test of why a button that allows them to mitigate it so much further is not needed at all.

Upcoming Destruction Warlock Resource Changes

Changes to the the resource model of Destruction Warlocks are coming in 7.2.5 with the purpose of making Soul Shard regeneration less random and Chaos Bolt more impactful.

As we've mentioned before, we’re making a number of changes to the resource model for Destruction Warlocks in the next patch. The goal is to create smoother, more granular, less random Soul Shard generation and make Chaos Bolt casts feel more impactful.

First, for Destruction Warlocks, Soul Shards are being split into parts of 10, which we’re currently calling Soul Shard Fragments. Mechanically, this will be similar to the Mists of Pandaria resource system of Burning Embers, except we want to go with a consistent Soul Shard visual, updated Soul Shard UI (work in progress), and name for the resource across all 3 Warlock specs. Some relevant spell changes:

The net result of these changes is that every baseline rotational damage spell will contribute to Soul Shard generation, pushing your resource forward at a steady pace.

Second, Soul Shard generation/refund rate is being reduced overall, mainly for the single-target rotation. However, this is coupled with major damage increases to both Soul Shard spenders - Chaos Bolt and Rain of Fire. Combined, this means that Chaos Bolts will be cast less frequently, but they will hit much harder:

For the AOE rotation, Fire and Brimstone (talent) will cause Incinerate to generate Soul Shard Fragments per target hit, which would largely push Immolate out of the AOE rotation with enough targets. Alternately, if you want to go down the route of maintaining Immolate on all targets in a clumped AOE situation, Cataclysm (talent) will have reduced cooldown (30 sec) and slightly reduced cast time, making it easier for you to do so.

As usual, everything discussed here will continue to be iterated on during 7.2.5 PTR and may change based on further playtesting and feedback.

Any chance you can tell us whats happening withWreak Havoc? It's probably holding destro back more than almost anything else. It has way too much power in it.

We generally agree with this.

In 7.2.5, Wreak Havoc will no longer remove the cooldown of Havoc- it will only increase Havoc's duration to 20 sec. Havoc baseline will have a 10 sec duration, 45 sec cooldown (subject to tuning).

Havoc's cooldown has gradually crept down over the years, resulting in very high uptime, and culminating in 100% uptime via Wreak Havoc. This has made Havoc a pretty forgettable button in a multi-target situation. You take Wreak Havoc, apply Havoc once every 20 seconds, then go about your single-target rotation as usual. Instead of being an important actual cooldown that you planned your casts around, it became a button you always had to just apply first, in order to start doing your rotation.

With Havoc not having 100% uptime, gameplay-wise Destruction will care more about when you generate Soul Shards, how you bank them, and how you prepare to spend them with Havoc coming off cooldown. Additionally, with Chaos Bolt casts becoming relatively rarer but dealing more damage, those times when you do have Havoc available will be even more meaningful.

Despite these changes to Havoc, I want to state that we still want Destruction to stay among the top several 2-target specs. Destruction has a clear niche of being great at 2-targets, especially 2-target spread out (which some specs can't handle as well) and we don't intend to disrupt that.

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I am pleased with the idea behind the change to Soul Shards for Destro Warlocks. They could probably go the extra mile to actually change the visuals back to Burning Embers since they're already changing the visuals, but meh. Mechanically it sounds like this will work pretty much the same as Burning Embers did and that's -mostly- what mattered.

(To be fair though, any decent add-on author could just make an addon that replaces the Soul Shards visuals with the old Burning Embers look and replace all mention of Soul Shards to Burning Embers, heh.)

Just gotta see how well the increase in Chaos Bolt/Rain of Fire damage makes up for the reduced Shards generation... and if they actually improve on it in a significant manner should it be revealed that it's not working as well as it should.

(lol Blizzard not changing Guardian Druids mid-tier because "that would be too extreme", but nerfing Ignore Pain to the ground just a few weeks into EN was just fine.)

Edited April 8, 2017 by Ammako

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Destruction having "shard fragments" makes me think that Affliction and Demonology will have something along the same vein in 7.2.5.

Also love the idea that Destruction will be getting meaty Chaos Bolts at the cost of less casts of it. That's why I enjoy Destruction, because it's the caster that launches a giant ball of fel energy at the target for massive damage, no other class does that. With that said, I feel that it should be a talent, just so people can get the weaker/more frequent Chaos Bolt if they want it.

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this means that Chaos Bolts will be cast less frequently, but they will hit much harder:

Like they didnt hit that hard already ;)

It's nice seeing some attention payed to the spec. I do like its current form, but am not entirely against changes... They call Wreak Havoc forgettable, but Afflic already gets a literally forgettable buff in Corruption if you talent for it - no cooldown at all. Zero. Up once and could last for hours.

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<Continuum> - [Chamber of Aspects][H] are recruiting!
Current Progress: 5/11 Mythic Antourus
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Looking towards Battle for Azeroth, we will be raiding as soon as possible and aiming for curves and mythic content. We do frequent Mythic+ dungeons as a guild as well as classic raids, older tiers and achievement runs.
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There are more changes coming to classes on the beta, and although none are as big and impactful as the Balance Druid rework, both Protection Paladins and Discipline Priests are getting quite a few changes soon.

With Paladins it's all about the core rotation and mitigation, with Consecration being at the heart of the changes, while Priests get a brand new talent, increasing their damage by a flat amount reduced by the number of Atonemets up at the time, as well as more talent reworks.
Protection Paladin (source)
A few changes to Protection in an upcoming build. Mostly focused on smoothing out issues in the core rotation and active mitigation.
Consecration no longer buffs Shield of the Righteous and Light of the Protector
Consecration cooldown 4.5s (from 9s) and duration 12s (from 9s), but you can only have one down at once
Mastery: Divine Bulwark reduces all damage you take while in Consecration (instead of increasing Shield of the Righteous effectiveness)
Avenger's Shield increases the effects (damage and armor) of your next Shield of the Righteous by 20%
Consecrated Hammer will be replaced with a new L15 talent
Listing all at once because they're all pieces of the same goals. First, Avenger's Shield is back to having some baseline defensive value, which pulls the rotation together by making you care about both hit and Hammer of the Righteous other than for pickups/damage.
Second, Consecration is easier to work with. If you don't have to move, you have to replace it less often, and if you do have to move, you can replace it much more quickly. While standing in Consecration still has some value, your core buttons no longer rely on it, and the loss of mitigation from being outside it is much smaller than Legion. It also provides a small source of baseline magic mitigation.
Finally, the gap between Shield of the Righteous uptime and downtime, in terms of mitigation, is less dramatic. The previous mastery made that gap get wider and wider as the expansion went on, leading to the problem of increasing moments of vulnerability when active mitigation was down. Shield of the Righteous will now have more consistent value across the expansion. The spec will be tuned expecting slightly lower Shield of the Righteous strength and uptime compared to Legion, which helps avoid the problem where there were windows of very poor mitigation compared to other tanks.

Discipline Priest (source)
A few changes for an upcoming beta build.
New talent: Sins of the Many. Your damage is increased by up to X%, diminishing for each ally with Atonement.
Likely location is L75, pushing Lenience to L100, and removing Grace.
We agree with trying to find a talent that calls to having a smaller number of Atonements out, but are trying a version that still provides some benefit in all situations.
Grace's concept was generally subsumed by the new mastery (which is seeming successful so far), and stacking Grace on top of mastery led to huge variance in the strength of Shadow Mend and Power Word: Shield casts. Making that choice with mastery is a better place than making it with a talent that was essentially required in some types of content.
The talent rearrangement should leave L100 as a row of talents that most show their strength when effectively healing a large number of targets, and L75 as a row of talents less focused on that situation.
Contrition's healing is increased by Power of the Dark Side
So that Power of the Dark Side remains neutral as to your choice of which mode of Penance to use.
Mindbender's damage reduced 24%
It has been unintentionally strong ever since the squish, as many people have observed.

Mythrax the Unraveler is the penultimate boss of Uldir and here's a video preview of the encounter by FatbossTV.
Mythrax the Unraveler
While questing in Vol'dun, Horde players learn that Sethrak successfully summoned Mythrax to the world. The Horde story in Zandalar culminates in the Zandalar Forever Scenario, where G'huun orders Zul to help him shatter his final seal with the aid of Mythrax.
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Damage Dealers
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Taloc & Fetid Devourer
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Play with the Blues returns Thursday, May 24 at 3:00 p.m. PDT on Battle for Azeroth Beta with Alliance Warfronts available for playtesting for the first time!
How to Participate
Create an Alliance character on Anduin and find the War Table in Stormwind to queue up for the Warfront. If you don't have Beta access there's still enough time to enter our Beta key giveaway. Don't forget to check out our preview of the Battle of Stromgarde Horde Warfront.
Blizzard (Source)
Greetings friends,

This Thursday (May 24 PDT), we'll have a Play with the Blues event focusing on Alliance Warfronts. Members of the Blizzard WoW Development and WoW QA teams will be fighting alongside you all on the Anduin beta realm. Be on the lookout for characters in the <Blizzard Alliance> guild.

Start Time: 3:00 p.m. PDT
End Time: 5:00 p.m. PDT
Realm: Anduin

How to queue for Warfronts:
1. Head to the Trade District in Stormwind.
2. Look for the War Table located outside of Trias' Cheese shop.
3. Interact with the table to queue up!

Reminder:
There are no level restrictions or prerequisite quests for Warfronts in the beta. If you'd like to participate, but only have a Horde character on Anduin (or no characters at all ... yet), all you need to do is create a fresh Alliance character, and you'll be good to go.